George Kooymans (Golden Earring) - Just A Little Bit of Peace In My Heart
This was one of Golden Earring's biggest early hits in the Netherlands, peaking at #3 and spending months on the charts in late 1968. I was reminded of it when I ran across a tweet from a fan posting the original video and commenting that George was "so adorable" then. I don't like the video (I don't like most of Golden Earring's videos, for that matter; much prefer videos from their concerts), but this is a nice song I haven't posted here before, and neither has anyone else, as far as I know.
Unlike most of their songs, the background on why it was written turns up on fan sites. George has been married all his adult life to his childhood sweetheart, Melanie (Millie), the sister of his bass player, Rinus Gerritsen. (Their families lived on the same block in The Hague.) But Millie left George for a while in the late '60s, prompting him to write this song about being heartbroken, being on his knees begging. Millie returned, they got married soon afterward, and they've been happily married ever since. And since the song had been a hit, the band continued doing it in concert, and it's a fan favorite.
Three videos below, in reverse chronological order. The first is from 2018, from a show George did as a member of Vreemde Kostgangers (Strange Lodgers), the supergroup trio he formed with two other famous Dutch musicians in 2016. The second is an acoustic performance by GE in 1992. And then the studio version from 1968, which I don't like as well, partly because it was drowned in strings...and the version they released reportedly had removed some of an orchestral arrangement that must have been really overdone. The song sounds better with a simple, clean arrangement.
Btw, although none of the fan sites I've seen mention the reason for those childhood sweethearts breaking up for a while, it's well known in the Netherlands that at about that time, George, though still in his teens, had discovered a beautiful young singer and was writing songs for her and producing her records. That was Bojoura (Bulgarian for Peony), the daughter of a Bulgarian opera singer who'd married a Dutchman. George's songs and production made Bojoura a star in the Netherlands (she was called the Marianne Faithfull of the Netherlands at the time). But after George and Millie got back together, he no longer worked with Bojoura. She became involved with and later married one of her backup musicians, drummer Hans Cleuver, who founded the group Focus with Jan Akkerman. Bojoura and Hans have a daughter who's also a professional drummer.
This is one of the songs that George wrote for Bojoura, her first hit in the Netherlands.
Bojoura had a few hits in the Netherlands later, including a cover of "The Letter." Reportedly she was nearly signed by Apple, but Mary Hopkin was signed about the same time.
Another of the songs George wrote for Bojoura. He would have been 18 or 19 when he wrote these.